Week of October 30th

Important Dates:
October 31st  Halloween Parties

The Halloween celebration will be on Tuesday, 10/31. Students will change into their costumes at 12:45, and the parties will begin at 1:00. The traditional PV parade will begin at 1:55. Students must be able to put on their Halloween costume in 5-10 minutes by themselves. Fourth grade will have designated classrooms for girls to change in and for boys. They will NOT be allowed to change in the bathroom. No props that resemble a weapon should be brought to school. THANK YOU to all the parents who are helping to make this a special afternoon for our classroom!

Kid with a Cape on the Go! - We've gotten some response from students with pictures of themselves spreading kindness. This initiative was the result of a visit from the author of A Girl with a Cape,  Amy Logan.  Her message to us was that WE ALL CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE by spreading kindness. Students can take a picture of  spreading kindness, with or without their "Kid with a Cape." A photo, drawing, or a written paragraph of the student and the event are alternative activities that can be turned in to the teacher. While this is optional, students have had fun posing with his/her "Kid!

Reading:  We will  begin to read and work with a story about the singer, Gloria Estefan. We will focus on close reading, text-dependent questions, vocabulary and the concept of making judgments.

Time For Kids: On Tuesday the students will be given a Time For Kids magazine. The magazines will start to come home weekly. Part of the nightly homework will be to read the articles. They will be given an open magazine quiz on Thursday of the cover story. Your child should keep the TFK in his/her binder so they will have it for the quiz on Thursday. 

English: In English,  We will continue a unit on Capitalization and Punctuation. This week's focus will be on commas and quotation marks. There will be homework in Google Classroom this week.

Spelling: Unit 10 - Suffixes -ment, -tion and -ly
This week's list contains words with the suffixes -ment, -tion and -ly.  Students will study the definitions of the suffixes and how they change the root words that they are attached to. We will also look at antonyms of the spelling and vocabulary words. The final test is scheduled for Friday, 11/3.

Social Studies:  We will begin our study of the Southeast. The students will learn the Southeast states and label them on a map. There will be a quiz for the Southeast states on  Tuesday, November 7th. 

Mrs. Bucklin's Math Class:.  We are working on division with remainders this week.  The students will learn how to divide a 2-digit number by a one digit number with remainders. The Unit 2 test is tentatively scheduled for Wednesday, November 8th.  

Week of October 23rd

Important Dates:
October 24-26 Parent teacher Conferences
October -27--No School Parent Teacher Conferences
October 31st  Halloween Parties

Reading:  We will continue our Courage theme. We will finish up working on our extended response question for Malala and Jackie Robinson.  We will then read the biography of Gloria Estefan.  Skills we are working on are cause and effect and responding to text-dependent questions.

English: In English,  We will continue a unit on Capitalization and Punctuation. This week's focus is on  Abbreviations and Commas. We will learn how to use commas in a series along with using commas correctly in our every day writing. There will be homework in Google Classroom this week.

Spelling:  Unit 9 : Prefixes pre-, re- and mis-
Words on this week's list will include the prefixes pre-, re- and mis-. We will study the definitions of these prefixes and how they change the meaning of the root word that they are attached to. The final test is scheduled for Thursday, 10/27.

Science:  We will continue  a unit in Life Science. The students are busy working on their Invertebrate projects. Presentations will be on Tuesday.  The test on this lesson has been changed to Thursday.  

Mrs. Bucklin's Math Class:.  In math this week we will continue Unit Two, Module Three, Multiplication Stories and Strategies. Students investigate the effect of doubling and halving factors in multiplication combinations. The students should also be practicing their multiplication facts nightly. Friday's quiz will be sent home on Monday. The students will be given an open note Multiplication checkpoint on Thursday.

Week of October 16th

Important Dates:
October -27--No School Parent Teacher Conferences

Reading:  We will continue our Courage theme.  The students will read an article on Malala Yousafzai and watched a video clip of  Jackie Robinson. They will then complete a Venn diagram comparing the two showing how they showed courage. After viewing the video of Jackie Robinson, reading the Malala  passage, and completing the compare/contrast Venn diagram, the students will write a response to the essential question  "Can courage be shown in more than one way?"

English: In English, we will continue with paragraph writing. We will also continue a unit on Capitalization and Punctuation. This week's focus is capitalizing names of places and things along with learning how to write abbreviations.

Spelling:  Unit 8 : This week's spelling/vocabulary list will include a variety of words that are appropriate for 4th-grade students. Instead of studying a spelling rule, we will focus on the definition of these words and how they might be used in reading and writing. Part of this week's lesson will also highlight how to use reference materials such as a dictionary, thesaurus, atlas, and encyclopedia. The final test is scheduled for Friday, 10/20.

Science:  We will continue  a unit in Life Science. This week we will learn about invertebrates. The students  will begin working on their Invertebrate Slideshow. There may be homework in this.We will also learn more about the five classes of vertebrates. There will  be a test on Tuesday, October 24th covering this lesson. 

Mrs. Bucklin's Math Class: In math this week we will continue Unit Two, Module One, Building Multiplication Arrays.  Skills and concepts we are working on are multiplying and dividing products to 100 using strategies. We will learn that in a multi-digit number each digit represents 10 times what it represents to the place to its right. We will also work with rectangular arrays and apply the area formula to solve problems. There will be a Checkpoint quiz on Friday. A study guide to  help prepare for the quiz will be sent home on Wednesday.  

Week of October 9th

Important Dates:
October 9-- No School Columbus Day
October -27--No School Parent Teacher Conferences

Reading: We will continue our Courage theme. This week we are continuing to close read an excerpt from the "I Have a Dream" speech. We will then focus on a writing activity answering the question,  What lesson about courage was Martin Luther King trying to teach through his actions?  The students will use ideas and direct quotes from the text to support their answer. We are also focusing on how to determine cause and effect in the story.

English: We will  begin a unit on Capitalization and Punctuation. This week's focus is capitalizing names of people and pets along with correcting run-on sentences.

Spelling:  Unit 7 - "Suffixes "-ness", "-less",  and "-en"
This week's spelling/vocabulary list will include words with the suffixes -ness, -less, and-en.  We will study the definitions of these suffixes and how to determine the meaning of unknown words by breaking the words into base words and suffixes and by using context clues. The final test is scheduled for Friday, 10/13.

Science:  We will begin a unit in Life Science. We will learn that animals are grouped into different categories. We will also read and learn which animals are vertebrates and which animals are invertebrates,

Mrs. Bucklin's Math Class: In math this week we will begin Unit Two, Module One, Building Multiplication Arrays. Students should be practicing their multiplication facts nightly to help prepare for this chapter.  Students will determine the area of base ten pieces in square centimeters and discuss the idea that the area of each piece represents its place value.